Saturday, January 02, 2010

"Well, he's like a joke. There's some fellow in New York, and in the States we'd hear people say: 'You can get everything off him; any pills you want.' It was a big racket, but a joke too about this fellow who cured everyone of everything with all these pills and tranquilizers, injections for this and that; he just kept New York high. That's what 'Dr. Robert' is all about, just a pill doctor who sees you all right. It was a joke between ourselves, but they go in in-jokes and come out out-jokes because everyone listens and puts their own thing on it, which is great. I mean, when I was young I never knew what 'Gilly, Gilly, Ossenfeffer, Katzenellen . . .' was all about, but I still enjoyed singing it. You put your own meaning at your own level to our songs and that's what's great about them."

"Don't Ever Change" is a 1961 popular song written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King. It is one of their lesser-known songs, although a version by The Crickets reached the top 5 in the United Kingdom. The Beatles performed the song on their BBC radio show Pop Go The Beatles, which was later released on their 1994 compilation Live at the BBC. It was also covered by Brinsley Schwartz on their Please Don't Ever Change album in 1973.

Friday, January 01, 2010

"I phoned Mary Hopkin and she came down and I listened to her sing in the recording studio. She was sensational, so I decided to record her. I had heard 'Those Were the Days' about two years earlier when I was out at a nightclub feasting on steak and lettuce. These two people came on and they sang this song. I think I was there about two nights that weekend. I heard the song twice, and it was one of those things I couldn't get out of my head. So I started playing it on my guitar. I always thought, you know, that it would be a hit song. But no one ever did it. I tried to get the Moody Blues to do it. They nearly did it, but it never worked out for them. It's better that they didn't actually because Graham Edge was saying to me the other day that if they had done it, they wouldn't have been into this thing they're into now. They would have had a mammoth hit and been pop stars all over again. So I recorded Mary Hopkin and she had the hit with it."

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

"Don't Bother Me" is the first song written by George Harrison to appear on an album by The Beatles. It originally appeared on the group's With the Beatles album in the UK, released in 1963, and on their Meet the Beatles! album in the U.S., released in 1964.

History

Harrison wrote the song while sick in bed at a hotel room in Bournemouth, England (where The Beatles were playing some shows during the summer of 1963). Harrison never regarded it highly, stating on one occasion, "'It was a fairly crappy song. I forgot all about it completely once it was on the album." He considered it an exercise in whether he could write a song, later saying, "At least it showed me that all I needed to do was keep on writing and then maybe eventually I would write something good." Harrison receives a writing credit for two earlier songs, "In Spite of All the Danger" (Paul McCartney/Harrison) and "Cry for a Shadow" (Harrison/John Lennon). Both were recorded by The Beatles but neither was released officially by the band until 1995's Anthology 1 compilation (see 1995 in music). Because the former was largely a McCartney composition (Harrison received a credit simply for playing the guitar solo) and the latter was an instrumental pastiche of The Shadows, "Don't Bother Me" is considered Harrison's first song by most (including the author himself).

The sullen mood and desolate lyrics--"So go away, leave me alone, don't bother me"--were unusual for The Beatles at the time but would become characteristic for Harrison. The song mostly stays in a minor key and achieves a thick sound through its double-tracked vocal, reverbed guitars, and busy drumming. The elaborate percussion lends the song a Latin rhythm accentuated by its stop-time structure.

"Don't Bother Me" is one of several songs featured in A Hard's Day's Night, during a scene where The Beatles dance at a nightclub while Paul's grandfather gambles elsewhere. At the end of the film, it is noted as a Lennon/McCartney composition rather than a Harrison composition.

Elliot Mintz (born February 16, 1945) is an internationally recognized media consultant and public relations expert. Popularly known as Paris Hilton's publicist and more recently as Chris Brown's.

During his 25 year career he has represented famous people in all aspects of the entertainment world. His clients have included (or currently include) the John Lennon Estate, Bob Dylan, Paris Hilton, Chris Brown, Yoko Ono, Christie Brinkley, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Diana Ross, Don Johnson, Melanie Griffith and dozens of others.

Early life

In 1971 he hosted a Kaiser Broadcast syndicated television show that integrated musical guests with film clips shot in and around Southern California. In 1973 Mr. Mintz was the Entertainment Correspondent for 'Eyewitness News' on KABC television in Los Angeles.

Beginning in 1988 he hosted a weekly syndicated radio series called 'The Lost Lennon Tapes' heard globally each week for almost four years. The hundreds of hours of broadcasts contained previously unreleased tracks, rehearsals, composing tapes, interviews and home recordings of John Lennon who Mr. Mintz met in 1971. He still refers to Yoko Ono as his best friend. He has appeared in two feature documentaries about John and Yoko and written an essay about his relationship with them published in 2005 by Harper Collins in a book entitled Memories of John Lennon.

Career

In addition to entertainers, he consults with CEO's of international companies about media related activities. His corporate clients have included Westwood One Radio, Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino, Bijan Fragrance and Penthouse Magazine. He also consults with record companies as well as motion picture studios. He provides free media advice for charities and causes he supports as well.

Mr. Mintz is referenced in more than 50 books, hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles and appears frequently on national television speaking on behalf of his well known clients. Although he handles all aspects of entertainment and business publicity services including branding, media makeovers, on camera interview preparation, website creation, and national promotions, he is best known for being a spokesman for high profile public figures. He has been referred to in the press as a 'spin doctor' or 'crisis manager'.

Mr. Mintz also makes television appearances to discuss such matters as the 'power and pitfalls of celebrity', the paparazzi, the new media and what he refers to as 'the myths of fame and publicity'. Prior to his career as a media consultant, Elliot Mintz spent ten years as a radio and television talk show host. He interviewed hundreds of guests on radio stations KMLA, KPFK, KLAC, KMET, KPPC, KLOS and KABC in Los Angeles as well as syndicated radio programs for 'Inner-View' and 'Earth News Radio.'

Personal life

In a profile on Mr. Mintz published in The New York Times in August 2006, he expressed a desire to retire, move to a ranch and be around horses.

"The Beatles had been trying to do 'Helter Skelter' before actually. They were doing it much slower and it didn't quite work out. When we were sequencing the album right at the end, Paul decided that it had to be mixed again. I was listening to running orders with John while Paul was in there remixing the song with Ken Scott as engineer. Ken came in and said, 'Paul's gone to sleep. You've got to come and help me.' And when we did the mix, we faded out and just faded it back up again and sort of left it. Then we said, 'Yeah, it's all right. That goes on.' That's all it was. There was no hidden meaning."

"I like this one. I wrote it about an acid trip I was on in Los Angeles. It was only the second trip we'd had. We took it because we'd started hearing things about it and we wanted to know what it was all about. Peter Fonda came over to us and started saying things like, 'I know what it's like to be dead, man' and we didn't really wanna know, but he kept going on and on . . . Anyway, that's where that song came from, and it's a nice song, too."

Monday, December 28, 2009

"Doctor Robert" is a song by The Beatles originally released on the album Revolver in the UK and on Yesterday and Today in the US. The song was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney helped him finish it. It was recorded in 7 takes on April 17, 1966 with vocals overdubbed April 19.

The song contains many drug references, including the fact that drug dealers are often called "doctors." The Beatles were often accused of putting drug references in their songs though they claimed that they hadn’t intentionally done so; ironically, the drug references in this song went largely unnoticed. John Lennon has said that Dr. Robert was actually himself, "I was the one who carried all the pills on tour ... in the early days." However, it has been speculated that the real life Doctor Robert is Doctor Robert Freymann, who supplied "generous amounts of amphetamines to people." Another speculation is that it referred to Dr. Charles Roberts, a physician in New York.

Cultural references

* The title of the song was used as a pseudonym by Robert Howard, lead singer with 80s group the Blow Monkeys. * Doctor Robert and Uncle Albert are referenced in Regina Spektor's song "Edit" from her album Begin to Hope. * In the video game Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, the player may access the personnel files in the Santa Monica Medical Clinic. On staff is one Dr. Roberts, whose personnel file says, "No one can succeed like Dr. Roberts." This is a variation on "No one can succeed like Doctor Robert," a lyric from this song. * The 2007 film Across the Universe features several Beatles songs and also employs several names from lyrics as character names. One character, played by Bono, is named Dr. Robert.

"With 'Revolution 9,' the Beatles said, 'We're about to do a sort of collage or montage of a few things.' They went up to the library at EMI and found loads of old tapes. They just nicked anything, like Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers, Oxford and Cambridge music tests for A levels. Loads of things. They took everything down there and made copies of the bits they wanted. Sometimes they played them backward. Sometimes they chopped a little bit out. They literally did anything they liked with the bits of tape. Then they assembled some really good-sounding loops. One of the ones they 'bunged' on was this Oxford music exam. A guy was playing the piano and said, 'Number 9,' then he played another bit. Obviously you had to identify the bits that you knew. That's where 'Number 9' came from, and there's no significance in it."

"I knew it would get connotations, but it really was a children's song. I just loved the idea of kids singing it. With 'Yellow Submarine' the whole idea was, 'If someday I came across some kids singing it, that will be it -- so it's got to be very easy.' There isn't a single big word. Kids will understand it easier than adults. 'In the town where I was born/there lived a man who sailed to sea/And he told of his life in the land of submarines.' That's really the beginning of a kid's story. There's some stuff in Greece like icing sugar -- you eat it. It's like a sweet and you drop it into water. It's called submarine; we had it on holiday."